Don Cheadle has been casted as the narrator for ABC’s upcoming reboot of the “Wonder Years”. Cheadle will voice the adult version of the main character Dean as he looks back at his childhood memories. The younger Dean will be played by Elisha Williams. In the original series, it was narrated by Daniel Stern.
Unlike the original series, the reboot will follow a black middle-class family in Montgomery, Alabama in the late 1960s civil rights era. Along with Elisha Williams, ABC has casted Dulé Hill, Laura Kariuki, and Saycon Sengbloh.
The new series will closely connected with the original series, as Fred Savage, who played Kevin Arnold in the original show, will direct the pilot and executive produce. Neal Marlens, the creator of the original show, will serve as consultant while in production. The reboot hails from writer and executive producer Saladin Patterson.
by Emily Nagle
Beginning on Friday, March 26th, Disney+ will be raising their prices for the first time since the platform’s launch.
The mass media conglomerate’s streaming service – which celebrated reaching 100 million subscribers earlier this month – will be raising its monthly rate from $6.99 to $7.99 (for a full year, the price will increase from $69.99 to $79.99). The bundle containing Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN Plus will also be increasing in price by a dollar, with a new price tag of $13.99 a month.
Why the price increase? Disney has unveiled a variety of new content for the platform, from original series including WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier to films that can be watched at home as opposed to in theaters, such as Cruella, Black Widow, and more recently, Raya and the Last Dragon. In December is when the company unveiled their biggest content slate yet; they confirmed at their live-streamed Investor Day their plans to release 10 Marvel series, more than 10 Marvel films, 10 Star Wars series, and 15 other original series, all to be released over the next few years. More money will allow them to fulfill these goals, producing more content for their rapidly growing platform.
In only a year, Disney+ reached 73.7 million subscribers worldwide. That’s nearly twice the amount that Hulu has. The company predicts that by the end of 2024, the platform will have 260 million subscribers. The reason for its successful launch? Even after the price increase, it’s still much cheaper than its competitors – HBOMax goes for $14.99/month, while the monthly rate for Netflix’s standard plan is $13.99.
The price change is taking effect in other countries as well – in Canada this took place last month, as the price changed from $8.99 CAD to $11.99 CAD. Meanwhile in Europe, the service’s monthly rate will be increasing from £5.99 to £7.99.
By Kurt Balingit
Launching on March 27, XFCTV will be available on Galxy.tv and downloadable through the Roku channel store
DESTIN, FLORIDA and Philadelphia, PA – March 23, 2021 – Xtreme Fighting Championships (OTC: DKMR) and Invincible Entertainment are pleased to announce the launch of their newest broadcast venture, www.XFCTV.com, a mixed martial arts (MMA) linear streaming network that will go live shortly before the XFC’s next MMA event, YoungGuns 1, on March 27 at FireLake Arena in Shawnee, OK. The service will be offered in Portuguese, Spanish and English, with potential to reach an audience of over 100 million MMA fans worldwide. The partnership comes at a time when opportunities for premium content remain strong within the OTT ad-supported space, as traditional cable and satellite services continue to lose subscribers.
XFCTV brings combat sports fans around the globe closer to the action in the XFC’s Hexagon than ever before. Managed and distributed by Invincible Entertainment, XFCTV subscribers will have access to the XFC’s vast catalogue of archived fights, fighter profiles, live events, behind-the-scenes content they can’t find anywhere else, and much more.
“The XFC prides itself on bringing our fans what they want to see, intense and violent matches between the most hardcore athletes and of course the xgirls, said XFC President Myron Molotky. We’re extremely excited to launch XFC TV before our next event because we know it’s something that our fans around the world are really going to enjoy.”
As the CEO of XFC, Steve Smith defined the vision for creating a platform that would not only take XFC to new heights within the combat sports world, but also to include many other partners in creating a combat sports network universe. Mr Smith stated “When we first became involved with XFC, we had the advantage to understand historically how fight fans engaged in watching not only the XFC on various broadcast channels, but also combat sports as a whole. The shifting preference by sports fans has enabled the XFC to partner with Invincible to offer more engagement and selection, which had been the desire, and now the demand of sports fans worldwide”.
The services are powered by Invincible’s proprietary Galxy TV™, a highly-scalable app development platform for OTT services. Invincible continues to focus on bringing well-established brands and film and television content from leading content owners into the growing free ad-supported television marketplace.
Tom Ashley, founder and CEO of Invincible Entertainment, added: “Streaming TV networks have been exploding but what’s been lacking is high-quality live sports. XFCTV solves that problem. The XFC is a premier MMA league with a fantastic track record of producing first-class events. We are proud to partner with an organization of this caliber and bring their iconic fights into the living rooms of XFC fans—those who are new as well as longtime, diehard fans.”
Plans are already underway to further expand the channel’s reach and additional details will be announced in the coming weeks. For more information, visit www.XFCTV.com.
About XFC
Xtreme Fighting Championships, Inc. (formerly Duke Mountain Resources, Inc.) is the first publicly-traded premier international mixed martial arts (“MMA”) organization with offices throughout the United States and South America, trading under the ticker symbol DKMR. Xtreme Fighting Championships (“XFC”) is now partnered with NBC Sports in the United States, and has previously been carried on some of the largest open television broadcasters in Latin America – Rede TV! as well as HBO, ESPN, Esportes Interativo, Terra TV (the largest internet portal in the world), and UOL – the largest internet portal in Latin America, and premium cable & satellite television network. The XFC has had over 185 exclusively signed fighters, representing over 35+ countries worldwide with even more growth expected. Boasting the signing of The Next Generation of Male & Female Superstars, the XFC is known for entertaining fans with the most action packed MMA events both on television and in stadium venues. The Next Generation of MMA.
About Invincible
For more than twenty years, Invincible has been a leader in the digital transformation of the entertainment industry, having built some of the earliest streaming services over a decade ago. Today, Invincible entertains hundreds of millions of consumers around the globe by providing premium content, streaming channels and technology services to the world’s largest media, technology and retail companies. For more information, visit https://www.invincibleent.com/
With around 2,000,000 Americans receiving vaccines across the U.S. every day, and the reopening of theaters in the Los Angeles area last week, box offices showed signs of continued growth this weekend despite only having one major studio release hitting theaters. Below are the top 5 highest grossing films for the weekend of March 19-21, 2021.
Top 5 Highest Grossing Films for Weekend of March 19-21, 2021:
1. Raya and the Last Dragon: $5,129,473 ($23,412,079 Gross Sales)
2. Tom and Jerry: $3,800,000 ($33,700,000 Gross Sales)
3. Chaos Walking: $1,932,097 ($9,691,730 Gross Sales)
4. The Courier: $1,822,089 (Premiere)
5. The Croods: A New Age: $625,995 ($55,250,573 Gross Sales)
In first place for the third weekend in a row was Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon, at $5,129,473 from 2,261 locations for a gross domestic total of $23,412079 to date. In second place, Warner Bros.’ Tom & Jerry stayed strong 4 weeks in raking in an estimated $3.84 million this weekend bringing the live-action cartoon to $33,700,000 in gross sales. Notably, performing well in the Los Angeles area for the film over the weekend.
The only major new release of the weekend was Roadside Attractions’s spy thriller The Courier, which raked in $1,822,089 this weekend, landing it in fourth place in the rankings with a fairly soft result overall. The Benedict Cumberbatch & Rachel Brosnahan title received an 84% “Fresh” score on Rotten Tomatoes and played very well with the audience who gave the film a 97% audience score.
by Emily Nagle
Ed Brubaker, one of the co-creators of Winter Soldier, has shared in a newsletter that he has “mixed feelings” about the new Disney Plus series “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.” The writer explains that he is unsure how to feel about Bucky Barnes becoming such a big part of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, because he doesn’t feel like he received adequate recognition for creating him.
“Everyone at Marvel Studios that I’ve ever met (all the way up to Kevin Feige) have been nothing but kind to me,” Brubaker explains. “But at the same time, for the most part all Steve Epting and I have gotten for creating the Winter Soldier and his storyline is a ‘thanks’ here or there, and over the years that’s become harder and harder to live with.”
Brubaker began working for Marvel Comics in 2004, with the first comic he worked on for them being volume five of “Captain America #1,” which he worked on with Steve Epting. This is the volume that resurrected Bucky Barnes after nearly 40 years, turning him into the Winter Soldier, a Soviet assassin with a bionic arm. He worked on the series until 2012.
“I have a great life as a writer and much of it is because of Cap and the Winter Soldier bringing so many readers to my other work,” Brubaker continues. “But I also can’t deny feeling a bit sick to my stomach sometimes when my inbox fills up with people wanting comments on the show.”
After laying down the foundation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Brubaker has received some recognition for his work, receiving a cameo in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” and receiving “special thanks” in the credits of “Avengers: Endgame,” “Avengers: Infinity War,” “Captain America: Civil War,” and “Captain America: The First Avenger.” Even still, it’s not the same as getting paid for his major contributions.
By Kurt Balingit
Midnight Movie Society, a curated subscription video service specializing in underground, cult and taboo horror, has partnered with Invincible Entertainment in a streaming deal that sees Invincible Entertainment handling Midnight Movie Society’s streaming services.
Midnight Movie Society is a partnership between Rue Morgue, the world’s leading horror in culture and entertainment brand and MVD Entertainment Group, a full service music and movie distribution firm, exclusively representing thousands of audio and visual products for DVD, Blu-ray, CD, vinyl, and digital rights, worldwide.
Invincible will be handling scheduling, and play-out services for Midnight Movie Society’s on-demand streaming services. Invincible will also be providing some content to Midnight Movie Society, by having their free broadcast network, Watch It Scream, play titles from both Midnight Movie Society and Invincible Entertainment on Watch It Scream and Midnight Movie Society’s websites.
Get Some Strange!
